Kani Gyosen - GrandmasterJ

 

    Kani Gyosen is Japanese for "Crab fishing boat" and true to the title, in this map players will fish for crabs. Since this is based on Half-Life the crabs in question are all headcrabs.

SCMapDB page

Author: takedeppo.50cal

Date of final release: 2020

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Kani Gyosen

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | March 20, 2022 | 3971 characters

    The idea behind this map is that players must spear fish for headcrabs and gather them all in a cage. The water is dangerous, sharks and bullsquids lurk around. Players have machineguns that work underwater and even have custom models for real world underwater machineguns. The crowbar replacement, the spear and the barnacle has a custom model and custom scripting as well. Although I don't think the barnacle has custom scripting, as the winch kept eating the headcrabs.

    Players spawn on a cute little boat, the deck is dominated by a cage, this is where the headcrabs go. There is a small cabin with a door that teleports players down into the lower decks with some interesting things to look at. Players can also go up on the top deck of the boat for a birds eye view of the water. The water looks very nice, but there are some big blocky brush waves that come in and I think they look terrible. I guess they are supposed to knock around unwary players because that is what they did.

    The underwater section looks good, there are a few landmarks scattered around like a big bomb, a big arch, a mailbox, but the majority of the decoration was clumps of weeds, big starfish, and blocky rocks. Navigating was easier from above, and difficult when amongst the generic sea fluff. Headcrabs blended easily into the background so the best tactic I found was to follow whatever the bullsquids were attacking. The bullsquids don't like headcrabs, and all the enemies respawn, so it's easy to track icky green balls and figure out where they are headed. If I can get my bearings from there to the ship I can snatch up all the headcrabs in the area and take note of where they spawned. Headcrabs like to spawn in clumps, and more than a few spawn inside tufts of sea grass. Headcrabs will also try to jump at you when they see you, but will get stuck floating underwater. This makes them sitting ducks for crabbing.

    At certain points, whether its timed or by how many crabs we got, the day would end and a new day would begin. This inevitably brings enemies at higher densities and respawn rates. Alien controllers begin to spawn in too. On day 4 two apache helicopters appear and makes things very difficult. There are no rockets, so if players want to down these apaches they have to use the machineguns, which is tedious. On day 5, the last day, there are many enemies, but thankfully no helicopters. When the last day ended we were shown our score, 81 crabs. Eight piles of money appeared and we got to play with our cash and our crabs for about a minute before the map ended.

    It is also worth mentioning that there was health, HEV, and ammo scattered throughout the entire map. The interior of the ship, the deck, and all over the ocean floor had an abundance of supplies. There were also two drivable boats at the back of the ship. The big brush waves made driving those out of the question.

    The map was cute and fun. It got tedious for me right in the middle of day 4. I thought to myself "when is this going to end?" and before I knew it I was on the last day and was invigorated to finish. The custom scripting is always nice to see, the concept is fun and new, everything works well. At times I was annoyed at the abundance of sharks and other enemies but they go down easily so it balanced out. I highly recommend this map.

Pros:

• The concept was new and original, good to have an objective other than killing things
• The whole map worked well to create a fun experience
• great custom scripted weapons
• end game crab counter is a great way to gauge how well we've done

Cons:

• headcrabs can be a bit hard to spot
• Apache fight with only bullets
• The big waves made of brushes on the water were annoying and prevented us from driving the boats
• the whole map gets tedious one day before the end, the map lasts for one day too long

Score: 8 / 10